Student Fact Sheet F-2 The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

As Big as Texas! Where Does the Trash Come From? Right now, there is a About 80% of the trash in gigantic “soup” of trash the Great Pacific Garbage

floating somewhere between Patch comes from California, Hawaii and Asia. activities on land. Litter This is called the North like plastic bottles, bottle Pacific Gyre, or more caps, and candy wrappers commonly known as the can end up in storm Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It is a drains or in rivers and streams that empty into swirling collection of plastic debris, or a bay or the ocean. Also, in coastal cities like garbage, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean San Francisco and Los Angeles, the wind that is bigger than the state of Texas! This often blows litter into waterways or directly enormous collection of trash moves with the into the ocean. The rest of the trash in the currents of the ocean. It cannot be seen from Garbage Patch (20%) comes from activities at the sky because most pieces are very tiny and sea. Every year, about 100 million containers float a few inches below the water’s surface. are shipped over the world’s oceans. One of How Did it Get There? the shipping routes is between Asia and North No one really knows when America. There are frequent, severe storms the Great Pacific Garbage along this route, which cause hundreds of Patch began. In the 1970s, containers to go overboard each year! Many scientists started studying of these containers hold things like tens of the area. They noticed that thousands of shoes or millions of plastic garbage was floating in the shopping bags and other plastic items. water, collecting together in Persistent Plastic a cluster, or group. They Plastic tends to make up a could see that ocean currents large part of ocean debris. carried this plastic garbage. Currents are the Since plastic is buoyant, flow, or continuous movement, that water or able to float, it can takes in one direction. Some large currents easily travel long are circular. Instead of moving in a straight distances on ocean line, they move in a circle, kind of like the currents. In addition to way water moves when you flush a toilet! being buoyant, plastic is also persistent. These circular currents are called gyres That means it lasts a very, very, very long (rhymes with fire). The Great Pacific Garbage time without naturally breaking down or Patch is basically one enormous collection of decomposing into smaller particles or tiny trash floating in a huge circular current. The pieces. Another way of saying this is that only time trash leaves the gyre is when it plastics do not biodegrade. Bio means sinks, or is flushed out by a big storm and “life,” and degrade means “to break down.” washes ashore hundreds of miles away. When something is biodegradable, it means

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it is made from something natural that was fill their stomach with trash once alive (either a plant or an animal.) It that doesn’t digest or move also means it can decompose and return to the through their bodies to natural elements or naturally occurring provide the nutrition they need to survive. materials found on Earth. Most plastic is Often, animals will stop eating if their belly is made from petroleum, or oil, which is not full of plastic, and they end up starving to biodegradable. Therefore, it can take 500 death! Each year, more than one million sea years for a piece of plastic to wear down into birds and one hundred thousand marine smaller particles! And even then, it still mammals die from plastics. Not only do they doesn’t return to a natural element. It just die from eating, or ingesting it, they also die becomes a very tiny piece of plastic. Another from getting entangled or caught in it. source of plastics in the ocean are nurdles. Plastic six-pack rings and plastic ropes and These are small plastic pellets, or balls, that nets are common traps for fish, birds and get melted down to make a variety of plastic other marine life that get entangled in them. products. Nurdles cause big problems! They What Can We Do to Help? often end up in the ocean where animals will 1. Stop buying water in eat them and get sick from the poisonous plastic bottles. Instead, chemicals that nurdles contain. Nurdles also use tap water to fill damage the bodies of fish, which makes it reusable bottles made hard for them to breathe through their gills. of glass or steel. The Problem with the Patch 2. Use cloth bags at the

Some people think store instead of plastic bags. We often that because the ocean don’t even need a bag! is so big, a gyre full of 3. Put lunch items in reusable containers floating garbage instead of plastic baggies. Carry a doesn’t matter that reusable, metal spork so that you don’t much. Well, they’re need to use plastic utensils. wrong! Oceans are complicated ecosystems 5. Eat ice cream in cones, not plastic cups. where billions of organisms, or living things, 6. Cut plastic six-pack rings so that animals live in natural balance. Plants like algae, can’t get caught in them. plankton, and seaweed make up the beginning 7. Stop litter! Tell family and friends that of the food chain for animals such as shrimp, litter hurts animals. Join beach clean-ups. fish, jellyfish, birds, sea turtles, otters, 8. Pick up trash outside your home and dolphins, sharks, and whales. A food chain sweep sidewalks with a broom. Hosing is the natural order of how animals get food. sidewalks wastes water and can push When plastics end up in our ocean, they often trash into storm drains. appear as food to animals and become a 9. Recycle! Learn your city’s recycling rules dangerous part of the food chain. Imagine a for plastic and other items. plastic bag floating in the ocean. It can look 11.Learn more! Visit these sites: just like a jellyfish, which sea turtles and Algalita.org ThePlastiki.com dolphins love to eat! When these animals eat http://www.surfrider.org/programs/entry/rise- plastic bags, it can choke them. It can also above-plastics SFEnvironmentKids.org